Tom & Marilyn's Hi Fi Shoppe opens in Old Town Saginaw

SAGINAW, MI — Music lovers and business owners Tom and Marilyn Rodammer want to get back to their roots.

"We got into this business because of the love of music — good, high-performance music systems," said Tom Rodammer, co-owner of Tom & Marilyn's Hi Fi Shoppe. "And over the years, the industry just evolved and grew so far away from that."

The couple recently opened the Hi Fi Shoppe at 404 Court in Old Town Saginaw.

The shop sells high fidelity audio and home theater equipment and records, offers trade-in and consignment and sells items on eBay for customers.

Despite the popularity of smartphones and other portable media players, they say records are making a comeback among the younger generation.

"They really like that whole throwback thing," Marilyn Rodammer said. "They really like the nostalgia in their clothes and everything."

But Tom Rodammer said selling records wasn't originally part of the plan.

"We accidentally got into the record business," he said. "I bought a used turntable from a fellow who had a couple of boxes of records. I brought those down here and started going through them, and people started coming in and saying, 'Oh, records.'"

The Doors, Abba, John Denver, Jodi Mitchell, Steely Dan and Frank Zappa are among the artists represented on the new store's shelves.

"This is a small start," he said of the records in the store. "We have another couple of thousand that we'll be moving into here in the next week or two."

In addition to teens and 20-somethings, the couple say retired baby boomers are using their new-found free time to rediscover old hobbies, including music.

"When we were younger, many of these people were real avid hobbyists, and then you get married, have families, their attention would be drawn to other things," Tom Rodammer said. "And now that they find themselves, in many cases, to be empty nesters they're looking back and saying, 'Gosh, I used to have a lot of fun listening to good-quality music.' And they're getting back involved with it as a hobby."

Tom and Marilyn Rodammer have been in the business since the 70s.

Back then, Tom Rodammer managed a store called Playback in the Fashion Square Mall. Marilyn Rodammer worked in the store.

When Playback closed in 1981, the couple decided to open their own business.

That year, they opened The Listening Room at 1305 Court. Eventually they moved their growing home theater and music systems business to 5801 State, in Saginaw Township.

The Listening Room closed its doors earlier this year.

"The way we conducted our business, we didn't need as much space as we had on State Street, so to reduce overheard our intention was to find some place smaller," Tom Rodammer said. "We actually thought for a moment that we might work out of an office from our home but, after 40 years of operating in storefronts, I think that would have been too big of a shock to our system."

While Tom & Marilyn's Hi Fi Shoppe offers some of the same services, including design and consulting work, the couple want to focus more on what attracted them to the business in the first place.

"We want to get back to, kind of, our roots, which is good sounding music systems," Marilyn Rodammer said. "...(We're putting) more focus back on the two-channel music systems."

Tom and Marilyn's Hi Fi Shoppe is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. The store is closed Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, but appointments can be arranged.

— Heather Jordan covers business for MLive/The Saginaw News/The Bay City Times. She can be reached at 989-450-2652 or hjordan@mlive.com. For more business news, follow her on Twitter and Facebook.